Dragon Dodge

In the magical game of Dragon Dodge, two teams of wizards put their spellcasting to the test where dragons move at your command and the last team standing wins…

A simple yet strategic card-driven, grid movement team game with a modular board.

Story:

I met Hidden Creek Games at the Evergreen Tabletop Expo in Tacoma. I was selling my dice bags and displaying my webcomic, Nwain. They liked the art in the comic, particularly that it is about a lady knight. They said they were working on a board game and looking for an artist. They had been having difficulty locating an artist who could draw a female wizard without making her “too sexy.” They wanted the game to be family-friendly, and with two young girls, they wanted female wizard characters that inspired traits like intelligence and activity–not standing around looking like a sexy halloween costume. We exchanged business cards, old school style.

Months later, we met at a cafe and got down to details. I illustrated the box art first, and we slowly branched out to character portraits, tiles, and cards.

One challenge with these cards was making sure the element cards and tile cards look different enough that they would not be easily confused with each other. To that end, the card borders are ‘made’ of different materials – paper for the element cards and stones for the tile cards. The backs have very distinct patterns.

Another challenge was creating icons that are clear and distinguishable for people with low vision. When designing them, I would frequently step away from my computer to check if they were clear from a distance. I also used an adjustment layer in photoshop to check if the cards remained clear in grayscale, for people with colorblindness.